Miko Veldkamp
Miko Veldkamp
For Miko Veldkamp, a New York-based painter born in Suriname and raised in the Netherlands, home is all three. After completing his MFA in Painting at Hunter College in 2021, Veldkamp has carved a practice fusing his memories of home—Suriname’s rich orange soil or the golden age of Dutch biking—to navigate his shifting identity from place to place.
To so many, home is not where you rest your head at night. Rather, it can be the bed where you heard ghost stories as a child, the city where you danced in nightclubs as a student, or the pavements where you now walk your child to school.
Colours bleed across Veldkamp's ink-soaked canvases, meandering around pseudo self-portraits, and various bicycles, piano keyboards, and fans that have weaved their way into Veldkamp’s psychological worlds.
His painting process is slow and deliberate, using glazing techniques to build layers of translucent colour. An opacity only further complicated by the shadows, light beams, and mirrors that demarcate the boundaries between Veldkamp’s inner and exterior world.
Daily journaling enriches Veldkamp’s creative process, jotting down fleeting ideas and observations that might otherwise slip away. Veldkamp won’t start a painting with a fixed idea. Rather, the canvas represents a dance between the memory, abstract shapes, and geographical styles in that given moment.
In the borderless world we live in, Veldkamp’s paintings offer a poetic and reflective perspective on the complexities of contemporary identity, race, and societal relations.
To so many, home is not where you rest your head at night. Rather, it can be the bed where you heard ghost stories as a child, the city where you danced in nightclubs as a student, or the pavements where you now walk your child to school.
Colours bleed across Veldkamp's ink-soaked canvases, meandering around pseudo self-portraits, and various bicycles, piano keyboards, and fans that have weaved their way into Veldkamp’s psychological worlds.
His painting process is slow and deliberate, using glazing techniques to build layers of translucent colour. An opacity only further complicated by the shadows, light beams, and mirrors that demarcate the boundaries between Veldkamp’s inner and exterior world.
Daily journaling enriches Veldkamp’s creative process, jotting down fleeting ideas and observations that might otherwise slip away. Veldkamp won’t start a painting with a fixed idea. Rather, the canvas represents a dance between the memory, abstract shapes, and geographical styles in that given moment.
In the borderless world we live in, Veldkamp’s paintings offer a poetic and reflective perspective on the complexities of contemporary identity, race, and societal relations.
Featured Work
Tied Fate
2023
Tied Fate
Miko Veldkamp
2023
122 x 137cm
Oil and acrylic on linen
